Bringi has pivoted to focus on music after a career in science. Passionate about shared prosperity and a sustainable planet, Bringi earned his doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering/Plant Cell Biology from Cornell. He co-founded Phyton Inc., a start-up that developed and commercialized a groundbreaking plant cell fermentation route to make the anti-cancer drug Taxol, without destroying 100-year-old yew trees in old-growth forests. Only much later did he realize that yew wood was prized for making lutes in medieval times! In addition to being a lead technical innovator, he oversaw commercial activities, intellectual property, and strategic alliances.

Bringi then served as CEO of the Michigan Biotechnology Institute (MBI), affiliated with Michigan State University, and propelled it into of the biotech industry’s most well-respected hubs for renewable fuels, chemicals, foods, materials, and polymers. As the pioneer of derisking – a process that quickly and cost-effectively weeds out flawed technologies while accelerating successful ones to commercialization – MBI’s unique piloting capabilities were sought after by leading industrial and academic innovators.

Bringi also led a global team to derisk and scale up AFEX (ammonia fiber expansion) technology for the benefit of smallholder farmers in Asia and Africa. The technology transforms crop residues such as rice straw – of which over 100 million tons are burned annually causing environmental havoc – into urgently needed cattle feed or into a feedstock for renewable fuels. The project was funded $4.1M by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and earlier by a $4.3M grant from the US Department of Energy for scaling up the process in MBI’s pilot plant.

For his 30-year contributions to biotechnology and society, Bringi was honored as 2015 Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering.

More about Bringi’s contributions can be found on his LinkedIn profile here. Lessons learned from his experiences in how to succeed by failing, can be found in his TEDx talk in the video below.